Different Yums For Different Tums

A couple of weeks ago I took Jordan to a new dietician here in Portland, since our previous dietician was incompetent and passive aggressive with our blenderized diet. Oh well, her loss, Jordan's gain. She's doing so well on real food we're never going back to formula. Bleck. Seriously, an esophagus is just a long g-tube, and one would never think of telling an orally eating person to stay away from real food in exchange for a complete diet of Ensure. Luckily all of our other doctors and medical teams are supportive* -- one of the benefits of living in the "granola northwest."

The new dietician called the other day with her analysis and said Jordan's diet is great -- except for phosphorus. I need to find a supplement for that, as she's only getting about half of what she should be getting. Mind you, it's not easy getting everything just right, considering that she only eats 525 calories a day -- or "living on air" as they say. It's half of what a typical 2-yr-old would get, and yet she's still in the 75th percentiles for both height and weight.

As far as variety in Jordan's diet, her only suggestion was adding spinach to her rotation**. So we did. Yum. We're going to make sure to make this concoction for St. Patrick's Day!

Meanwhile, The rest of us enjoyed a little chocolate fondue dessert that evening. Double yum! Hey, we did use nice, healthy fruit to dip into the chocolate.Too messy for clothes

*Yes, most people around the country, and even around the world have had very little support, and even opposition to blenderized diets for the tube fed family members. It's insane, really.

**Jordan's daily ingredients: soy yogurt (with live culture), cod liver oil, flaxseed oil, canola oil, corn syrup, blackstrap molasses, oatmeal, barley, flaxseeds. In addition, each day she gets one juice (apple, grape, cranberry, prune, etc), one meat (beef, turkey, chicken, pork), one or two veggies (beans, corn, peas, carrots, squash, spinach, etc), and one fruit (blueberries, peaches, pear, apple, banana, raspberries, etc). She also gets half of a men's daily multi-vitamin, vitamin K, and lots of extra calcium & vitamin D, since seizure meds tend to steal vitamin D from the system. These vitamins get tossed right into the blend.